Leaked earnings report sent Twitter stock crashing, down 18 percent at close of market

Shawn Knight

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Controversy surrounded Twitter’s earnings report on Tuesday as the company’s first quarter results leaked online more than 30 minutes before the close of market. The results showed Twitter missed the mark on revenue which sent share values plummeting and prompted the company to halt trading. By the time trading ended for the day, shares were down more than 18 percent.

Financial intelligence platform Selerity was the first to publish the results which they claim to have found on Twitter’s own investor relations website. Nasdaq, who hosts Twitter’s IR website, told Bloomberg that the company’s earnings had been inadvertently released by the exchange’s website.

Regardless, Twitter for the first time surpassed the 300 million monthly active user mark with 302 million monthly active users. That’s up 18 percent year-over-year and is a healthy increase from the 288 million it had in the previous quarter but what sent stocks south was the revenue miss.

Twitter posted revenue of $436 million for the quarter, far less than the $456.2 million Wall Street was anticipating. The company pointed to its acquisition of marketing technology company TellApart for part of the reason why revenue was down. CEO Dick Costolo added that lower-than-expected contribution from some of their newer direct response products also contributed to lower revenue.

All said and done, Twitter posted a loss of $162 million versus the $132 million loss during the same time period a year ago. Looking ahead, Twitter lowered its guidance for next quarter to between $470 and $485 million.

Photo via AP

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"The results showed Twitter missed the mark on revenue which sent share values plummeting and prompted the company to halt trading."

The NYSE halts trading, not Twitter.
 
So does this mean Twitter will be closing their doors sometime soon? Not that it would make any impact on my being.
 
Oh damn a company that doesnt try to break even losing share prices, what will we do??

I think its time that people start to realize share prices mean absolutely nothing... "Oh damn x company got £1.100billion out of our £1.105billion estimation.. time to start unloading all our shares in that company... sooo disappointed!"
 
So, their revenue missing the mark by 5% is is considered "far less" than wall street's expectations?

Tough crowd.

I don't think the amount they missed by was the problem. I think it was the fact that they were low and the reasons they were low. The reasons they were low will still exist in the future, and that means twitter will continue to make less in the future. That's all it takes for an investor to sell their stock. Twitter is down another 6% today.
 
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